Friday, 27 March 2015

JAPANESE pianist Noriko Ogawa, an Associate
Artist of the Bridgewater Hall, devised her first piano festival there three
years ago – ‘Reflections on Debussy: in the Mirror of the East’.

Now she’s been asked to mastermind another:
‘R & R: Ravel and Rachmaninov’, focussing on two great composers for the
piano, near-contemporaries but very different people.

“Ravel was very small – and Rachmaninov a
very big man. Ravel’s writing is incredibly precise – miniatures that are
beautifully crafted and carefully made. Rachmaninov was a Russian, with a big
heart and not shy of being Romantic – his music is on a huge scale.

“I’ve visited Ravel’s house near Paris (now a private
museum), and his personality is still there. What shocked me most was the
bathroom – there were so many nail files on the cabinet! They explained it was
because he had a different one for each of his fingers.

“And there is a cupboard in the lounge, full
of letters awaiting answers. People are still studying what kind of man he was,
but really his music is the only thing that signifies his personality.

“Rachmaninov revealed his heart in every
piece: he was vulnerable, but never secretive. He said it was important to find
the climax in every piece of his music – Russian players know that, and I’ve
noticed they always want to make it happen.”

The festival stretches over several weeks
and involves top pianists including Peter Donohoe, Martin Roscoe, Kathryn
Stott, Murray McLachlan and Clare Hammond, as well as Noriko herself.

It will include a children’s concert and
workshop (April 17), a Mid-day Concert (April 23) and a four-concerto finale
with the BBC Philharmonic (April 24). Specially dear to Noriko’s heart will be ‘Jamie’s
Concert (April 22) for parents and carers of children with autism and other
learning disabilities.

“Since I did this at the Debussy festival
in 2012, the idea has grown quite big,” she says. “I’m now an official cultural
ambassador of the National Autistic Society, and the Guildhall School of Music
and Drama is supporting me to do research through these concerts. I’d like many
people to join us – those with an autistic member of the family or who want to
understand more about the condition.”

The first date is Tuesday, March 31, and
features a lecture recital by Murray McLachlan, and Peter Donohoe performing
Scriabin’s Sonata no. 7, Ravel’s Miroirs and Book Two of Rachmaninov’s
Preludes.

Tuesday, 24 March 2015

THERE have
been some thrilling events in the recent story of the Royal Northern College of
Music, but the official re-opening of the concert hall, resplendent now with
its galleries, new lighting and new floor, was one of the greatest I’ve
witnessed.

The
10-minute standing ovation at the end of Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ symphony
reflected not just the fact that they’d done something they’d never been able
to do on such a scale before – stage the huge 90-minute work, with over 200 young
musicians taking part, on their own premises – but also that the performance
itself was magnificently accomplished and (in my case at least) brought a lump
to the throat.

Much of
that was down to conductor Jac van Steen, who brought to this quasi-religious symphony
a complete personal commitment and passion. In many ways it was the most
compelling and affecting performance of it I’ve heard. That’s because he’s one
who knows exactly how to handle the young musical thoroughbreds who populate
the RNCM stable. Cool head and warm heart is the secret: give them clear orders
and they’ll follow you to heaven and back.

From the
electric opening, with ruggedly articulated, gloriously responsive and
romantically lyrical string playing, it was clear it would be a very special
evening. The brass were disciplined and warm in chorus, the woodwind piquant
and pastoral – the final plucked string notes of the movement precisely
together.

The sentimental
second movement was played with remarkable delicacy from strings, wind soloists
and horns, and as grandfatherly as you could wish for. The third’s surreal
dance had a delightfully springy rhythm, deriving from the flick of van Steen’s
wrist and his clarity of gesture. He balanced every full texture, even the
loudest, most blaring discord.

The Urlicht
fourth movement introduced mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly’s wonderful solo voice,
peerless in this devout, serene meditation. She was to join with soprano Jane
Irwin and all available forces in the paradise-storming finale, where the
previously off-stage brass and the RNCM Chorus high in the centre gallery brought
the crowning glories to Mahler’s vision of new life for the dead. Jane Irwin’s
voice floated like a wisp of incense, and the peroration was as climactic as it
could be.

This was
also a test of the hall’s new acoustic, which it passed with distinction.
Occasionally hard with big sounds before, it’s lost none of its intimacy but
gained a new dimension.

Friday, 20 March 2015

SALFORD Choral Society has a UK
premiere in its concert with Manchester Camerata at the Royal Northern College
of Music on March 28.

This is not a big surprise, you might
think, for one of the region’s liveliest choirs, which will perform under its
young conductor, Matthew Hamilton.

However, the music the group will play is
unusual in that it was composed over two centuries ago – by the man who was
boss to Mozart’s father.

It’s a Requiem by Luigi Gatti, music
director to the archbishop of Salzburg
from 1783 to 1817. Written around 1807, it survived in Salzburg Cathedral
archives until its recent rediscovery. The modern world premiere was by
Salzburg Cathedral Choir in 2012, and Salford Choral has secured the right to
bring it to the UK
first.

“Gatti had written several operas in Italy before his move to Salzburg, and you can see the influence of
opera in his sacred music,” says Matthew. “He has a particular gift for melody
– like in Mozart, the phrases are achingly elegant. It’s a great piece to
sing.”

It’s also about 15 years later than
Mozart’s own more famous Requiem – and strikingly different in tone.

“Composers such as Cherubini, and later
Berlioz and Verdi, wrote settings of the Requiem with a dramatic treatment of
death and judgment,” says Matthew, “and this is earlier than those. It’s
turning the corner into the Romantic type of Requiem.

“It’s scored for a slightly larger
orchestra than Mozart’s – but for the Dies Irae there are four trumpets, and
that’s more dramatic than anything Mozart’s does. It begins and ends serenely,
in C major, but there’s real grit there, too, and it’s very much a choral
setting – perfect for us to get our teeth into.”

Matthew has been helping Salford Choral get
their teeth into lots of things since taking over as music director in 2012.

He’s also associate conductor of the London
Symphony Chorus, director of Reading Bach Choir and Keele Bach Choir, musical
director of the New London Chamber Choir, and works with the BBC Singers, BBC
Symphony Chorus, CBSO Chorus and the BBC Proms – but still lives in Chorlton.
He got married last September to his former university colleague Amanda, and
since she’s working in Aberdeen, Manchester makes a good
base for them both.

And he’s conductor for a Manchester Chamber
Choir concert on May 23 at the Bridgewater Hall, when they and organist Wayne
Marshall explore works by the 20th century French composers Dupré and Duruflé.

Friday, 13 March 2015

CELLIST Alisa Weilerstein has become a welcome
visitor to the Hallé over the past five years, giving outstanding performances of the
Dvořák concerto and Shostakovich’s first.

Now, in this season highlighting all
Shostakovich’s concertos for violin, for piano and for cello, she’s back to
play the second cello concerto (with Sir Mark Elder). It’s a very different
work from the first – and yet, she says, “I actually think the second concerto
is far more profound.

“Musically it’s different, of course, and
it ends very enigmatically and quietly. The first is virtuosic and clearer –
the second, written a long time afterwards, is more introspective and darker.

“These are things I really love exploring.
Shostakovich has a very identifiable, individual language, and the first
concerto for violin and first for cello have a similar structure and character.

“But in his music there’s always an
underlying sense of struggle, even if on the surface it pretends that
everything is lovely. That’s something that appealed to me, even as a child.”

She began playing very early in life and
always wanted to be a soloist with orchestras around the world. In the years
since 2010, when we first heard her play with the Hallé, she has begun recording the greatest 20th
century cello concertos under a contract with Decca Classics.

That has included a highly praised
recording of Elgar’s concerto, with Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle
Berlin. It grew from live performances with him and the Berlin Philharmonic in Oxford and Berlin
– and she says, remembering that he and Jacqueline Du Pré had once
played and recorded it together, to begin with she felt ‘that’s the only work I
can’t play for him …’

But she found him a conductor who treated
her in ‘the most fantastic way’ – and the CD has been a career milestone for
her.

The other recent major milestone in her
life has been getting married, 18 months ago, to young Venezuelan conductor Rafael
Payare, the newly appointed boss of the Ulster Orchestra. They had ceremonies
in both New York and Venezuela.

Despite the busy schedules that each of
them pursues, Alisa says: “We do see a lot of each other. When one of us is
working, the other goes to where they are. Last month, for instance, he
followed me to where I was playing – at other times I follow him. We chase each
other around the world!”

Thursday, 12 March 2015

THIS new
production of a Mozart masterpiece is good example of Opera North doing what it
ought to do. Making opera accessible while keeping to high musical and
production standards should be the company’s watchword, and this fulfils it.

That’s not
to say that everything made sense or hit perfection – but there have been very good
productions in the past to compare with. In Jo Davies’ new one it’s sung in
English (Jeremy Sams’ clever translation) with no surtitles to distract
attention – so the comedy is visual as well as verbal and the singers have to
put the lines over.

They all
manage that well, some very well. The interesting thing for me was that Quirijn
de Lang, as Count Almaviva, came over so sympathetically, with his attempts to
play the old-style aristocrat boss frustrated by his servants (and, of course,
the women whose plotting crosses the class barriers completely). He is a superb
singer, too.

That’s not
to do down Richard Burkhard’s performance as Figaro, which was well acted and
finely sung, but I noticed that de Lang uses a conversational style of
recitative singing (almost Sprechgesang) that sometimes sits a little loosely
to the notation, whereas the other principals are all stricter.

There’s
also an element in the production which focuses on the crumbling façades of an upstairs-downstairs
social setting (literally so, in the case of Leslie Travers’ set designs, and
emphasized by the costuming – Gabrielle Dalton – in a Downton Abbey sort of period),
so the tottering structure of feudal power becomes a powerful concept.

Davies’
great achievement here is to get all the singers to find real human
personality, not caricature, in their acting. Some of them were strikingly
successful. I don’t remember a less harridan-like Marcellina before (Gaynor
Keeble, looking a tiny bit like Imelda Staunton), and Henry Waddington – always
a great character actor – is really believable as Dr Bartolo.

Silvia Moi
and Ana Maria Labin both look their parts, acting and singing beautifully as
Susanna and the Countess respectively, and Helen Sherman tackles the difficult
task of being a lovestruck teenage boy with gusto.

It’s
strongly cast all round – good to see Ellie Laugharne making her contribution
as Barbarina – and conductor Alexander Shelley pilots everything with skill and
sympathy from the pit. It may not plumb all the emotional depths, but this
Marriage Of Figaro is quality entertainment.

Friday, 6 March 2015

OPERA NORTH are back at The Lowry from
March 10, with three programmes: a new production of Mozart’s The Marriage Of
Figaro, a return visit for their recent La Traviata, and a double bill of
Falla’s La Vida Breve (last seen here in 2004) and a new production of Gianni
Schicchi, by Puccini.

Opera North say the former received
‘extravagent audience and critical praise’ 10 years ago – well, not from this
source. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. But the latter is a
comedy and contains one of the most popular tunes in all opera – O Mio Babbino
Caro, sung by the young Lauretta (soprano Jennifer France) to her dad, Gianni (baritone
Christopher Purves).

The latest presentation of The Marriage Of
Figaro from the company is directed by Jo Davies, who has previously directed
their popular versions of Carousel and Ruddigore. It’s one of the greatest
operas ever written – light and funny but simultaneously tender and moving.

I spoke to mezzo-soprano Helen Sherman, who
trained at the Royal Northern College of Music and is singing Cherubino in this
production. It’s her role-debut with Opera North and her first time as ‘the
hormone-filled teenage boy’, as she calls him.

“It’s so much fun,” she says. “I used to be
very analytical about acting as a male, and I’ve done a number of male roles
over the years, but this time I’m trying to focus on characterisation, looking
at him as a human being rather than a caricature.

“Jo Davies doesn’t let any of the details
pass by without working on them, and neither does the conductor, Alexander
Shelley.

“We’re singing in English and there are no
surtitles – quite unusual these days – so the audience can really see
everything we’ve been able to find in this production.”

Helen has been busy ever since her time in Manchester, including
singing with English Touring Opera in Donizetti’s The Siege Of Calais (where
she got rave reviews, and which she’ll soon sing again) and in The Coronation
Of Poppea. She’s also sung Mozart for the Classical Opera Company, Rossini’s
Rosina (in The Barber Of Seville) for Longborough Festival, and Carmen for a
big tour with Mid-Wales Opera which earned her an award nomination.

“And then I came to Leeds,”
she says. “It’s been a fantastic time. The whole team’s hearts are in their
work and the results are wonderful.”